|
|
|
Review Essay
James Kirke Paulding:
Forgotten American
Michael L. Black, Associate Professor Emeritus, Bernard M. Baruch College, City University of New York
Advocate for America: The Life of James Kirke Paulding.
By Ralph M. Aderman and Wayne R. Kime (Selinsgrove, Pa.: Susquehanna University Press; London: Associated University Presses, 2003. Pp. 430. $85.00.)
James Kirke Paulding: The Last Republican.
By Lorman Ratner (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1993. Pp. viii, 136. $85.00.)
| On May 30, 1832, at a large public dinner for Washington Irving, who had returned to New York City after seventeen years in Europe, the toasts were many. One of them, however, linked Irving to his friend and collaborator on Salmagundi (1807–08), James Kirke Paulding (1778–1860): "[W]hile Mr. Irving had been doing honor to his country abroad, Mr. Paulding had been doing honor to his country at home" (quoted in Aderman and Kime, p. 165). Yet in 1860, when Paulding died at his Hyde Park residence of Placentia on April 6, only a few periodicals had obituaries, and there was just one eulogy, at the New-York Historical Society. By contrast, Irving, who died on November 28, 1859, was the subject of numerous appreciations. |
1
|
|
What happened in these three decades to transform Paulding from a household name into an afterthought? Paulding wrote five novels, several plays, numerous short stories, several satires on Great Britain and America, frequent magazine articles on all manner of subjects, and also poetry. He was also the author of numerous anonymous essays for newspapers and magazines. He wrote so much that, as he said in 1854, he could "specify only one tenth part of them, or direct where they are to be found" (quoted in Aderman and Kime, p. 333). Compared to Irving and James Fenimore Cooper, Paulding was not only a more prolific writer, but his use of several genres was remarkable. Yet today (and even at his death) that literary production and even his name are not well known at all. |
2
|
|
In 1993 Lorman Ratner, in James Kirke Paulding: The Last Republican, produced a short (136 pages) study of Paulding which presented him as a defender of the Republic and its culture.1 The work, now out of print, did little for Paulding studies or for his reputation. It is also marred by a typeface that looks very much like that of a typewriter (Major John André also loses his accent). In addition, the premier Paulding scholar, Ralph Aderman, is twice referred to as "Howard" in the "Bibliographic Essay," and the author is unaware that Paulding's brother-in-law, William Irving, was the third collaborator with Paulding and Washington Irving on Salmagundi (1807–08), the series of twenty pamphlets that captivated New York. |
3
|
|
By contrast, Ralph Aderman and Wayne Kime, in Advocate for America: The Life of James Kirke Paulding, present a well-researched and complete picture of their subject's literary and political career. Aderman had already completed what his collaborator calls "a finished draft," which Kime then revised, condensed, and found a publisher for (p. 13). |
4
|
|
Aderman is the most important Paulding scholar in the United States, not only having collected and published 416 letters in his Letters of James Kirke Paulding (1962), but also having written extensively on Paulding (thirteen articles are cited in the bibliography). In addition, as one of the editors of the four volumes of Washington Irving's Letters (1978–82), he is more than knowledgeable about that author, who was in some respects an antithesis of Paulding. Everything about the book suggests long hours and many years in preparation (about sixty additional letters are referred to in the notes), and the discussions of all aspects of the author's private and public life as well as the extensive notes mark the work as Aderman's most important scholarly effort. |
5
|
|
This book is almost three times as long as the Ratner one. The work proceeds chronologically, with careful attention to as many of the author's works as possible (especially the reviews, both British and American), so that it is now, and will be in the future, the standard work on Paulding, easily surpassing the 1984 Twayne volume by Larry Reynolds, which nevertheless remains the best short introduction to this author. |
6
|
|
Paulding was the pre-Civil War American writer most involved with both politics and the government. In fact, his twenty-three years on the navy board in Washington and as navy agent in New York City, not to mention his role as secretary of the navy (1838–41), made him a government functionary, almost a career civil servant. Although other writers (Irving, Hawthorne, Melville, Whitman) found themselves, at one time or another, in government service, Paulding lasted the longest and rose the highest. |
7
|
|
In addition, unlike other American authors, Paulding supported, praised, and wrote constantly about the virtues of the Democratic Party, especially the man who appointed him as secretary of the navy, President Martin Van Buren. Stalwartly pro-slavery and very much anti-abolition, Paulding was also a reliable Democratic journalist and commentator, not someone who made stump speeches for the local party heroes but something of an advisor behind the scenes as well as a very reliable pen for all things Democratic. |
8
|
|
Given his long years of service to the Department of the Navy and his intimate knowledge of many of its bureaucratic niceties and problems, it should be a bit surprising that he was the third, not the first, choice for the post as secretary, until one realizes that such positions went to politicians, not career employees. Van Buren had wanted the position for someone from New York, first asking the unknown Jacob Sutherland, who refused. The "Little Magician," as Van Buren was known at the time, ?then turned to Washington Irving, whom he knew personally from his service as secretary to the legation in London in 1829–31, and from a sightseeing tour the two made in December, 1831, often called the "Dutch tour"; Van Buren and Irving had also exchanged correspondence. |
9
|
|
Irving also refused the position, for which he knew he was completely unqualified, suggesting his former collaborator instead. Moreover, Mahon Dickerson, the inept predecessor (as admitted by just about everyone), had managed the department so clumsily that Andrew Jackson's secretary of war, Joel Poinsett, stepped in and took over a portion of the job. Dickerson was so inconsequential to the administration that he is not mentioned at all in a recent biography of "Old Hickory." |
10
|
|
Paulding became secretary on July 2, 1838, and left in March 1841, one of the many casualties of the Whig triumph ("Tippecanoe and Tyler Too") of 1840. Aderman and Kime say something about his role in Van Buren's cabinet—largely as a host for dinner parties for congressmen and foreign dignitaries—but their discussion of several aspects of his less-than-quiet tenure suggests that he struggled hard and not always successfully to reform and reorganize a navy that was often out of control. |
11
|
|
Never having been to sea himself (Paulding got his first job in the Navy Department as the result of his biographies of War of 1812 naval heroes), the secretary allowed Commodore Isaac Hull to take his wife along on the Ohio, a seventy-four-gun warship, to the Mediterranean, but he was then informed, months later, that Mrs. Hull had also invited her sister along for the trip. Hull, one of the heroes of '12, had had his own way for years (as had others), ignoring orders when he thought he knew better, and on this voyage, his treatment of some of the younger officers eventually compelled Paulding to restore them to their ranks. |
12
|
|
This undisciplined trip is related by Aderman and Kime in entertaining detail, but Paulding remains an integral part of the narrative, although his presence in faraway Washington makes him very much a long-distance observer. In contrast, Paulding is almost lost in the chapter on the U.S. Exploring Expedition of the late 1830s, better known as the Wilkes Expedition, which sailed to South America, the Antarctic, and then the Pacific, during which Wilkes managed to offend as many American navy personnel as possible. |
13
|
|
Congress appropriated money for three steamships, and, although Paulding did not think them necessary, he got them built. He tried, not always with much success, to bring more (or some) discipline to the department, being especially bothered by the many navy personnel, such as Jesse D. Elliott, who lived at home and sometimes dabbled in non-navy matters. |
14
|
|
These three chapters, which comprise almost a quarter of Aderman and Kime's work, are quite detailed, proving that the Navy Department was indeed a nest of malcontent and stodginess. Although some of the problems Paulding encountered are interesting and amusing, the work would have benefited from more specific discussion of the state of the department and the navy when Paulding found himself in Washington as secretary. At the end of his secretaryship, he was glad to leave Washington, where a combination of Whigs and discontented officers had made his three years rather difficult. |
15
|
|
With his government employment and also with his family connections (he inherited several houses in New York City from his wife's family, the Kembles), Paulding was able to buy Stephen Decatur's former house in Washington, a few blocks from the White House, as well as to spend the large sum (in 1845) of nineteen thousand dollars on the fifty acres near Hyde Park, New York, for his estate of Placentia. In contrast to other American writers of his day, he was not entirely in thrall to a publisher such as those who bedeviled authors like Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville. |
16
|
|
Paulding was, or wanted to be, an innovator in American publishing, proposing to his publisher, the Harper Brothers, a seventeen-volume uniform edition in November, 1833—the first American collected edition by any author. He refused ten thousand dollars for his copyrights, preferring a royalty arrangement of ten cents per copy over two thousand for each volume sold. And he would be able to buy the stereotype plates from the publisher at one-half their original cost (p. 173). |
17
|
|
The edition was ultimately twenty-three (not seventeen) volumes, but several factors militated against its success: first, the Harpers often deposited a title for copyright several years before the work was printed, for reasons that are not clear; second, the United States economy underwent a serious constriction after 1835; and third, in his role as secretary of the navy in Washington, Paulding was not able to supervise his literary affairs in New York City. |
18
|
|
The edition stopped with The Merry Tales of the Three Wise Men of Gotham in 1839, a work which, unlike other Paulding works earlier in the 1830s, "attracted no attention in the press" (p. 177), the first time that a Paulding work had been so treated. In retrospect, however, it was a signal of the author's decline in readership. As early as June 1834, he had been the subject of stinging criticism by Park Benjamin, who claimed that the best writing in Salmagundi had been Irving's. Paulding had also been roughly handled by the young N. P. Willis (in April 1839), who continued the theme: "Every lion has his jackal, Paulding was Washington Irving's" (quoted in Aderman and Kime, p. 257). After more than three decades as a respected and popular writer, Paulding was now fair game for younger critics (in contrast to Irving, who rarely endured this sort of treatment in the press). |
19
|
|
By the end of 1839, therefore, with the edition out of print, Paulding rapidly became something of a has-been. He broke with the Harpers and published few books thereafter, most notably the two novels The Old Continental (1846) and The Puritan and His Daughter (1849), neither of which received the acclaim of earlier novels such as The Dutchman's Fireside (1831) or Westward Ho! (1832). |
20
|
|
The student of Paulding must conclude that, in terms of his literary production (although that production remained impressive), his career as an important and influential writer more or less ended with his becoming secretary of the navy in 1838. The demands of that position made it impossible for him to do any writing, and after 1841, although he continued to write frequently, most of his work was for magazines. One puzzling aspect of Paulding's career is why he accepted Van Buren's offer of the Navy Department, because, considering the potential importance to his literary reputation of his uniform edition, still in production, he would have been much better advised to stay in New York City and supervise his literary career. This loyal Democrat paid heavily for his one foray into the upper echelons of power in Washington. |
21
|
|
Paulding was sometimes the victim of bad timing. For instance, after a decade of defending the United States in the 1810s during what was called the "paper war," in 1819 he produced a second series of Salmagundi. However, in a little more than a decade, the public taste had changed from the wit and whimsy of 1807–08, and this second series was unsuccessful. And he had the misfortune in the 1830s to propose an innovative publishing arrangement at a time when economic factors were not favorable. |
22
|
|
Paulding's failed collected edition and his lack of success and popularity after 1840 sharply contrast with the successes of his sometime friend, Washington Irving. At the same time that Paulding was trying to turn his literary career around, with Salmagundi, Second Series (1819–20), Irving was embarking on a new literary career with The Sketch Book (1819–20), a very different kind of book. From time to time, Paulding approached Irving (not the other way around) about the book they called "old Sal," and as late as 1834, he proposed a collaboration with the younger author, which was, once again, turned down. |
23
|
|
In 1846, after Paulding's trail-breaking but not successful collected edition, Irving, whose works had been out of print for four years, returned from four years as minister to Spain. And he too proposed a new edition (which had been turned down by the Philadelphia publishers Carey and Lea in 1842). But he was much more fortunate, not only in the choice of the young George P. Putnam, who was beginning a new publishing house, but also in the timing, the years 1848–59. During this period, he earned an average of eight thousand dollars per year (the equivalent of at least one hundred fifty thousand in current dollars) as Putnam issued new editions and new works. Irving was able to revive his career and his literary fortunes. He ended his days living comfortably in the "rookery" of Sunnyside, with his older brother Ebenezer and his several nieces. |
24
|
|
In a final twist of fate that almost seems a metaphor for the reputations of the two men today, Sunnyside is a flourishing tourist attraction on the banks of the Hudson, while Placentia, Paulding's home in Hyde Park, New York is no more. It burned in the late 1890s, "and most of the land along the Hudson River reverted to an uncultivated state of bushes and trees" (p. 386, n. 26). |
25
|
|
1. This book was noted in the "Books in Brief" section of New York History 76 (October 1995): 452.
|
Content in the History Cooperative database is intended for personal, noncommercial use only. You may not reproduce, publish, distribute, transmit, participate in the transfer or sale of, modify, create derivative works from, display, or in any way exploit the History Cooperative database in whole or in part without the written permission of the copyright holder.
|